Office of the Provost

New Faculty 2016-17 (T-Y)

Michael Tobia

Teacher-Scholar Postdoctoral Fellow; Psychology

Michael joins Wake Forest from Hershey Medical Center at Penn State University, where he served as a Post-Doctoral Scholar at the Center for NMR Research. He previously served as a Post-Doctoral Fellow in the Department of Systems Neuroscience at the University Medical Center Hamburg-Eppendorf in Germany and the Functional Neuroimaging Laboratory in the Center for Mind/Brain Sciences at the University of Trento, Italy. Michael holds a Ph. D. in Psychology and Neuroscience from Temple University and an M.A. in Psychological Science from James Madison University. His research interests include mind/brain relationships, tool selection and tool-related knowledge, resting state networks, multimodal data analysis, and neuronal current fMRI. Michael has many publications including “Altered Behavioral and Neural Responsiveness to Counterfactual Gains in the Elderly” in Cognitive, Affective & Behavioral Neuroscience and “Neural Systems Mediating Recognition of Changes in Statistical Regularities” in NeuroImage. He is a member of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, Society for Neuroscience, Organization for Human Brain Mapping, International Society for Magnetic Resonance in Medicine, and Cognitive Neuroscience Society.

Barry Trachtenberg

Presidential Chair; History

Barry joins Wake Forest as the Presidential Chair of Jewish History from the University at Albany where he served as Associate Professor and Director of Programs in Judaic Studies and Hebrew Studies. He was previously the Interim Director of the University at Albany Center for Jewish Studies. Barry completed a Ph. D. in History at UCLA with a concentration in European Jewish History and a Post-Graduate Diploma in Jewish Studies at Oxford University’s Oxford Center for Hebrew and Jewish Studies. He has taught courses such as: Secular Jewish Identity and Culture, Jewish Civilization from the Birth of the Israelites until the Present, The American Jewish Experience and Holocaust in History. Previously he served as Senior Research Fellow for the Kiev Judaica Collection at the Gelman Library of George Washington University and as a Research Fellow for the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum as well as Visiting Research Fellow for the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. Barry has multiple publications including his book The Revolutionary Roots of Modern Yiddish, 1903-1917 and journal articles such as “From Edification to Commemoration: Di Algemeyne Entiklopedye, the Holocaust, and the Changing Mission of Yiddish Scholarship” in the Journal of Modern Jewish Studies. He has served as an external reviewer for the National Endowment for the Humanities grants and for pedagogical materials of Facing History and Ourselves: Holocaust and Human Behavior.

Amanda Shoaf Vincent

Assistant Professor; Romance Languages

Amanda comes to Wake Forest from the Department of Languages, Literatures, and Cultures at the University of Florida, where she taught intermediate and advanced Business French, intercultural competency for management, French grammar and composition and corrective phonetics. She obtained a Ph. D. in French Civilization from the Department of French and Francophone Studies at Pennsylvania State University, where she previously taught introduction to French culture and civilization, advanced writing and grammar and multiple levels of French language. Her publications include “Bercy’s ‘Jardin de la Memoire’: Ruin, Allegory, Memory.” In Landscape Journal and “Bercy’s ‘Jardin de la Memoire’ Landscape as a Language of Memory” in Contemporary French and Francophone Studies. Amanda also has submitted a book manuscript entitled Constructing Nature, Cultivating Meaning: Paris Park in the Late Twentieth Century. She is a member of the Modern Languages Association, the Society for French Historical Studies and the American Association of Teachers of French.

Laura Marie Weltie

Visiting Lecturer; Health and Exercise Science

Laura joins the faculty of Wake Forest after completing her M.S. in Health and Exercise Sciences as a student. Her thesis is titled Weight Fluctuation and Cancer Risk in Post-Menopausal Women: The Women’s Health Initiative. She holds certifications as a Clinical Exercise Physiologist with the American College of Sports Medicine and as a Healthcare Provider of Basic Life Support with the American Heart Association. She has also won the Althea Loose Johnson Award for Kinesiology and the Bruce Crawford Morrison Rummel Scholarship for Kinesiology, both at James Madison University. Laura has given several presentations including “Aging and Exercise: How Much is Enough?” at the Translational Science Institute of Wake Forest Baptist Health and “Physical Activity and Type 2 Diabetes: An Epidemiological Review” at Wake Forest University.

Nicholas A. Wolters

Assistant Professor; Romance Languages

Nicholas joins Wake Forest from the University of Virginia, Charlottesville where he recently completed his Ph. D. in Spanish and a dissertation entitled Men of the Cloth: Fashioning the Priest in the Restoration in Novel in Spain. His examination fields included Enlightenment and Romanticism, Realism and Generation of 1898, and modernism. Nicholas also holds an M.A. from the University of Delaware, Newark in Foreign Languages and Literatures, with concentrations in Spanish and French. He has previously taught intermediate Spanish, intensive grammar, and Business Spanish. Other teaching interests include Spanish peninsular film, gender and sexuality studies, priesthood in Spain and Spanish for marketing. Nicholas has several publications including “Fashioning the Deviant Male Body in Tomás de Iriarte’s El señorito mimado o la mala educación” in Romance Notes and “Las joyas de la Marquesa: agencia femenina en Un matrimonio a la moda de Ramón de Navarrete” in Decimonónica. He is a member of the American Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies, the International Association of Galdós Scholas, Interdisciplinary Nineteenth-Century Studies and the Modern Languages Association.

Robert J. Won

Teaching-Scholar Postdoctoral Fellow; Mathematics and Statistics

Robert comes to Wake Forest from the University of California, San Diego, where he completed a Ph. D. in Mathematics and an M.A. in Pure Mathematics. His dissertation is entitled The graded module category of a generalized Weyl algebra. His research interests include noncommutative algebra, specifically noncommutative ring theory and noncommutative projective algebraic geometry. Robert’s previous publications include “Partitions of AG (4,3) into maximal caps” in Discrete Mathematics. He has previously taught precalculus, multivariable calculus and graduate algebra as well as given talks on Z-graded noncommutative geometry, Hopf algebras, SET and AG (4,3). In addition to his mathematic publications, Robert has published outside of the field including “The Dynamics of Proactive and Reactive Cognitive Control Processes in the Human Brain” and “Strategic Allocation of Attention Reduces Temporally Predictable Stimulus Conflict” in the Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience.

Abbie P. Wrights

Visiting Lecturer; Health and Exercise Science

Abbie joins the Wake Forest Faculty after having previously served as the Lead Physical Activity Interventionist for the LIFE Randomized Controlled Trial and Exercise Coordinator for the Wake Seniors Research Study in the Department of Health and Exercise Sciences. She completed an M.S. in Health and Exercise Sciences at Wake Forest University and a B.A. in Athletic Training at Messiah College. She holds certifications as an American College of Sports Medicine Exercise Specialist and American Heart Association- Basic Life Support. She previously taught weight training and water aerobics as well as served as an Exercise Leader for the Health, Exercise and Lifestyle Programs. Her publications include “Pilot Studies for Developing Clinical Trials of Cognitive and Behavioral Interventions: The Seniors Health and Activity Research Program in Clinical Trials: Journal of the Society for Clinical Trials and “The Lifestyle Interventions and Independence for Elders Pilot: Two Year Folow-Up” in the Journal of Gerontology Medical Sciences.

Qing Ye

Part-time Lecturer; East Asian Languages and Cultures

Qing joins Wake Forest from the University of Oregon, where she completed a Ph. D. in Chinese Language and Literature and a dissertation entitled Reading Bodies: Aesthetics, Gender and Family in the 18th Century Chinese Novel: Guwangyan (Preposterous Words). She also holds an M.A. in East Asian Studies, with a major in Chinese Literature and Culture from McGill University. Her research interests include Late Imperial and Modern Chinese Literature, gender and sexuality, and intellectual history. Qing has previously taught Chinese language at both the first and second level. Her publications include “Secuality, Politics and Sorrow: Reading the Rear Courtyard (Hou Ting) in Jin Ping Mei (The Plum in the Golden Vase)” in the Virginia Review of Asian Studies.

Qiaona Yu

Visiting Assistant Professor; East Asian Languages and Cultures

Qiaona joins Wake Forest from the University of Hawaii Manoa, where she completed a Ph.D. in Chinese Linguistics and Pedagogy and a dissertation entitled Assessing Chinese Syntactic Complexity via TC-Units. She also holds an M.A. in Chinese Linguistics and Philology with a Teaching Chinese as a Second Language Specialization from the Peking University. Qiaona has previously taught courses at all levels of Mandarin language and Business Chinese as well as served as the coordinator for Graduate Assistants. Her publications include The Experiencing Chinese Picture Dictionary and “Assessment of Students’ Understanding” in Science Teacher. She is also a member of the Chinese Language Teachers Association.